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Topic: Cut out (Read 4205 times)

Here are tho photos from the latest call to perform a cutout. The bees are nested on the right hand side of the chimney in the last picture. The house is due to be demolished in a fortnight's time so if we want it it's a next weekend job. Looking down the chimney the nest appears to be about 3 feet down. We could not see how far down the comb extends. We decided not to stick our heads into the opening as the guards were getting a bit edgey.

The roof is a bit risky due to height and slope (those live power cables we climbed over to get to the chimney should be disconnected this week), but alternative access is through the brickwork on the first floor (second floor for those of you on the other side of the pond) which should bring us in just below the comb (depending on how far down it extends).

So Ozbuzz, it'll be a bit of work, are you up for it?

Assuming that we open up the chimney and we are just below the comb, I was thinking that we take the whole nest in one piece (if possible) and dump it straight into a box and worry about putting it into frames at a later time once it has been relocated. What do you, or anyone else, think?

The weather is mostly cold at the moment (winter but improving!) with the occasional warm day. Which is why I want to disrupt the bees as little as possible.

We're talking about partly demolishing a house! am i up for it! bring it on hahaha.

Is Saturday good for you? I'm busy sunday...early start?

I've got those secondhand boxes that i mentioned:

1 X Deep with four old frames and four plastic drawn frames2 X mediums with fully drawn comb

I also have another deep box but don't have any frames to go in it...

I can chop the comb out of the medium frames (albeit i'd sooner use full depth frames but it's what i have laying around)It all looks a bit old and manky so anything i take away will be going in an isolation yard away from my main hives - plus we don't know what the colony might have. When i inspected that back bungalow there was a cupboard loaded with dead bees. It looks like a pest controller might have been in there but i'm not 100% certain - if not then something caused them to die en-mass.

I might even have a shot at making up a couple of plywood 5 frame nucleus Five Frame Plywood Nucleus and get hold of some new frames for them... I've just gotten hold of a heap of 12mm plywood here at work for free

Where abouts is it that you fellows will be having fun on Saturday? Dont know how I will be situated then but will give thought to watching the fun and games and offer a spare pair of hands if needed. Good to see you blokes keeping the Down Under forum alive.

The nest is in Eaglemont (near Heidelberg). I tell you though, I'm a bit annoyed with Julia calling an election on cut-out day. It really makes the logistics of voting when I need to be at the site early a bit of a challenge.

Can the owner leave the key somewhere? I can get there early and atleast take the plaster off until you get there.... I'm going to try and make up five or six nucs and see if I can get new frames for them on friday

These are the pics from the weekend's fun filled cut out. The comb (black too) was at least 2m high possibly as much as 3m. We didn't go down any further than you can see in the pics as there didn't seem much activity in the bottom part. Didn't see the queen but OzBuzz had ordered one from KI just in case. The job took us about 5 hours and we had to pull down the ceiling and push off some tiles to get good access. We grabbed all the brood we could find, which wasn't much, and some stores of honey.

Looks like that was a rough one for sure! I hate having to go through masonry. Great job you two!

Scott

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Thanks guys. Yes, we had fun. It's comming towards the end of winter here and we are both hanging out to get back into the active part of keeping and chasing swarms. The chance of collecting a feral hive was just too good to pass up. :-D

It certainly beat the many calls I've had over the last couple of months only to find when I got there that it was a wasp nest.

G'day mate, I did go in, super quickly, for a manual release of the queen on Monday. She quickly raced down between the frames with the bees feeding and cleaning her-release a success! When I was combining the two boxes on Sunday (I put all the honey we found plus some empty comb to fill up most of the space) I noticed tgey had filled about half a frame with nectar in one day... They have also been bringing in pollen. I haven't put a feeder in yet-I'm hoping they can make us of the warmer patches to forage plus the honey I put in there. I haven't had a chance to make another hive body or divider board yet so I can feed them in the hive. I just hope the new queen has gone to work laying and that they're making new comb. Sunday and Monday are supposed to be 18 & 19oC which will be good for them as there are lots of flowers in bloom around here including wattle

If you get some time, can you check something for me in regards to wattle trees. I had heard that there is next to no nectar in them and the pollen is protein poor so that the bees leave them alone. I had a walk around this morning doing some bee spotting while I waited for a couple of tyres to be fixed and I only found one wattle. I could not see any bees at all the tree. There were bees in the area because I could see them on plum, almond and magnolia trees.

On another note someone in the beekeepers club collected their first swarm of the season on the weekend! - Bring it on baby!!! :)